There Is An Old Story About The Stick That Would
Not Beat The Dog, And The Dog Would Not Bite
The pig, and so on; and so I
am quite sure that ill-natured cur could never have lived with
That
'yang-yang' shrew, nor could any one else but he have turned the gear of
the hatch, nor have endured the dog and the woman, and the constant
miasma from the stagnant waters. No one else could have shot anything
with that cumbrous weapon, and no one else could row that punt straight.
He used to row it quite straight, to the amazement of a wondering world,
and somehow supplied the motive force - the stick - which kept all these
things going. He is gone, and, I think, the housekeeper too, and the
house has had several occupants since, who have stamped down the old
ghosts and thrust them out of doors.
After this the cottages and houses came in little groups, some up crooked
lanes, hidden away by elms as if out of sight in a cupboard, and some
dotted along the brooks, scattered so that, unless you had connected them
all with a very long rope, no stranger could have told which belonged to
the village and which did not. They drifted into various tithings, and
yet it was all the same place. They were all thatched. It was a thatched
village. This is strictly accurate and strictly inaccurate, for I think
there were one or two tiled and one 'slated,' and perhaps a modern one
slated.
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